Heartless at the Checkout Line “I’d never take my anger out on you,” she said, when I remarked she looked so piqued I had the inclination to skidoo. As someone who desired her, I freaked out at the dewdrops missing from her ears, the stern configuration of her lips, her strident voice and mortifying leers. Since these impediments did not […]
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Separate, but… The boss told me I did a good job and the extra hours I put in last week secured a big account. He couldn’t give me a raise because the economy was poor: ‘As soon as earnings pick up’… But it didn’t stop him from a luxury vacation in France and Italy. Now is it just […]
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TRINITY AFFINITY “And the three men I admire most, The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, They caught the last train for the cost The day the music died.” (from Don McLean’s “American Pie”) The three men I admire most, Though passed, remain alive To me because of what they wrote. Their legacies survive. Most favor Verne […]
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Insignificance Late in life I struggle against my insignificance When I should enjoy the freedom from performance before an audience. Applause is happiness but if they withhold applause, embarrassment. When Da Liu put me to work crunching hexagrams and spreadsheet numerology Instead of ghost writing his books about T’ai Chi for longevity I was humiliated but freed. No need to […]
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I take a 12 month chip, a copy of The Iceman Cometh, drape myself in Union blue, cultivate a salesman’s grinning grip. A Valley trip lies ahead, road miles registered in a company car. Spring becoming summer, there’s a ghost in the garden, a feral cat, sensuous in the drying grass. I light a Tiparillo, block walk the […]
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Once they spot me All my bakoki disappear Like dew in the morning sun Pledging to see their halves Or take children on rounds Leaving me desperate. I too shall marry because I disgraced not my uncle To curse me die a bachelor Neither did lust lure me fuck a donkey and have my testicles smashed. I can’t stand […]
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I. As suspicious of the morning as I am thankful for the night, I no longer follow bird flight, the sinking of the violated sun. Mouthing a dialect of short checks and charity wards, I stare at a wasting life, unhappy, aging, unhealthy. Sympathies have been trained out of me. The elegance in a sniper’s logic is what remains. […]
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Plain Girl Pretty Rose was a plain girl from a small town. She sang in the choir, never missed Bible study, left for the big city after high school. She worked nights in a shanty diner next to a bar where working men gathered. Depending on how much the men had to drink Rose looked appealing but she ignored […]
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Overpass In the gravel hole slumbering in cold fatigue open and open is tomorrow never arriving. But pale and pasty sickness in my mirror is all I see when I look at my changing body, changing again to form a great wonder. Weak as a broken limb, my mind is empty of inspiration and I am drifting with this […]
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MURDER INK It was that innocent and silent night, when all souls were hibernating and the cockerels were roosting, that the ambience was polluted. A thousand unthankfullness to the wordsmith, for waking up his lethal injection from its long coma. Then starring it as the major actor in the stage of the imminent massacre. He bled intermittent ink via vein […]
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